OK, there are caveats. The ADP report, perhaps after too much tampering and too many surprises, has lost some of its credibility. The ISM report is still in positive territory, and a separate gauge from Markit is a little bit healthier.

There really was unusually bad weather. There really was a big disruption to trade from the port issues on the West Coast. There really was a big run-up in the U.S. dollar.

And yet — it does seem odd that not a single Wall Street economist is worried the U.S. is in, or is near, a recession. A check of emailed reports found the word “recession” was absent in every report issued Wednesday, except for a historical reference to the last one.

The Atlanta Fed has constructed something called a “nowcast” — basically, an estimate of GDP growth just based on incoming economic data. The latest update to reflect Wednesday’s data on construction spending puts the nowcast at exactly zero. And still, the R-word isn’t escaping anyone’s lips.

Sure, there are good reasons why the U.S. economy could rebound in the second quarter and throughout the year. In the last five recessions, consumer sentiment started falling beforehand; it’s rising now, thanks to steady jobs growth and falling gasoline prices. There have been some positive signals out of the housing market, depending on how much faith you put in numbers ahead of there spring buying season. And there are signals that, at least at the lower end of the jobs market, raises are starting to coming through.

But at the very least, there equally are reasons why the U.S. economy maybe won’t rebound. What’s going to suddenly turn business investment around, particularly when a major industry (energy) is still in the early stages of responding to a calamitous oversupply? Moreover, it’s rare for recoveries, as tepid as this one has been, to last as long as this one.

For sure, this isn't an attempt to argue that the U.S. is headed for a repeat of the Great Recession, or even definitely arguing the U.S. is going to experience a mild one.

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